1. Field
The following relates to data-enabled mobile transceiver devices, such as data-enabled mobile phones, digital assistants, and smartphones, and more particularly to using these devices in conjunction with broadcast receivers for provision of enhanced data and services.
2. Related Art
Broadcasting of information, such as radio broadcasts of music and news, makes reasonably efficient usage of a given broadcast medium, considering a total number of devices that can receive a broadcast. However, a total amount of data that can be transmitted on a broadcast connection remains more limited than would desirably be available. Broadcasts largely are untargeted, by their nature, and thus, they do not provide an effect means to personalize information for a given receiver. Broadcasting does not provide an effective uplink channel, to get data from broadcast receivers to a broadcaster.
On the other hand, a transmission of content via cellular wireless transmission, such as streaming music to a smartphone, is much more targeted in its transmission, in that each smartphone user likely would select a particular stream of music to receive. However, an aggregate amount of bandwidth required to stream many separate streams of music from cellular transceiver towers, issues of tower handoff, as well as the typical way pay-per-usage model of most wireless data plans makes such an option difficult for carriers and expensive for consumers.
Some broadcasts, such as Frequency Modulated (FM) radio stations, with a Supplemental Channel Authorization (SCA) sideband, carry some metadata about the main program (e.g., a song title can be provided on the SCA channel for the song being broadcast on a given FM station). However, SCA provides a relatively low bandwidth way to communicate such data. Satellite and HD radio providers also include track title and artist metadata information on broadcasts. Further metadata included in broadcast content may briefly describe broadcast advertisements and news related segments. It would be desirable to have more metadata available in conjunction with such broadcasts, and also to facilitate commercial transactions relating to content being broadcast.